The users perception of your brand, product or service plays a significant role in the effectiveness of your online presence. In many cases, whether implicitly or explicitly, it is by the quality of your content that you are judged.
Online credibility can be hard to come by. If you have a well-known brand, or a product that everybody knows about and wants, half your battle is already fought and won. However if, like most of us, you’re turning to the internet to improve your market share and drive your sales or participation, chances are that you need to work on building a positive reputation as well.
If you’re doing business online, trust and credibility are essential, before any business can take place, and good content can help build it.
Build Credibility Through Content
If your content is interesting, unique and relevant to the purpose and theme of your website, you’ll find users coming back again and again to take advantage of it. In order to achieve this, content needs to be easy to understand, and to find. It needs to appeal to your audience, and it needs to be updated or added to frequently.
Your articles should reflect the personality of your business. If you can be sincerely honest and helpful to your audience through the medium of your content, you’ll not only improve your image, but increase your chances of converting visitors into customers.
Content Updates Create Repeat Visitors
A couple of paragraphs ago, I mentioned the importance of updating your content. This is a vital step for a number of reasons. When you’re trying to build the foundation of a credible website, regular updates are an easy way of demonstrating that your site is an active and growing one.
As well as search engines, regular content updates appeal strongly to repeat visitors to your site. If your audience knows that new, useful articles are added on a regular basis, there’s an incentive to come back and find out whats new. And every time a visitor returns to your site, you have another chance to convert them into a customer.
The Value Of Content
The true value of content is twofold. On the one hand, content forms an important part of the way search engines determine your sites ranking. On the other, content helps determine the way that visitors perceive your site, and as we’ve seen, that perception plays a role in the way that they interact with, and make use of, your online presence.
Keeping your content relevant, useful and up-to-date can give your website a significant advantage in a constantly changing online world. And in order to succeed in that world, we need to use every advantage we can.